GEP SMART vs SAP Ariba Procurement comparison

Why PeerSpot?

GEP Worldwide and SAP are both solutions in the Procurement Software category. GEP Worldwide is ranked #3, while SAP is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.5. Additionally, 100% of GEP Worldwide users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between GEP SMART and SAP Ariba Procurement based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Procurement Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement

September 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash

Management Consultant at Accenture

Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions

Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.

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it_user1709418

Senior Product Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees

Doesn't require a background in analytics to run reports

SMART has been helpful for sourcing and public bids. For regulatory purposes, our university posts bids, depending on the scope of the bid. We get a lot of value out of SMART's ability to post to a public site and have suppliers see that information, register in the tool, and participate. SMART features for collecting information and its timeline capabilities are highly useful. Then on the contract side, the reporting capabilities are the most valuable. Our use case focuses primarily on post-execution and lifecycle management, so it's essential to be able to report accurately especially compliance-related reports. SMART is easy to use, especially when reporting. It isn't designed for a hardcore analyst. You don't need to have a background in analytics to run reports, which is huge. I realized I hadn't touched too much on the spending side, but we use SMART for all spending analytics, and any commodity manager procurement professional can go in and run a spending report. That was a business decision to restrict who can run reports since that data can be exported and used. But the reporting capabilities are incredibly easy to use.

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Argy Soudi

Senior Procurement Consultant at Ps digital tenders limited

Has connected procurement and contracts efficiently while setup and support still require improvements

Support could be faster for critical issues with SAP Ariba Procurement. When patching happens and new releases come out, it can be hit and miss, though mostly it remains reliable. The on-time response is 99.9999%, but the main issue over the years has been with releases and patching. The initial setup of SAP Ariba Procurement is not straightforward. We have been trying to set it up for two and a half years for the council I work with. The personal account login is ready-made and allows landing page adjustments, but the overall software implementation can take forever and requires multiple teams to work on it.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Manual efforts have been reduced and the accuracy has increased. In the processes I have done, the accuracy has reached 100 percent, and manual load and time has been reduced."

"We have seen more efficient processing and less number of errors due to quality control."

"A cloud deployment typically takes no more than one business day."

"My experience with Automation Anywhere over three years has shown tremendous growth in operational efficiency and business processes, as it helps to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks such as report generation and data entry quite faster and efficiently, reducing errors by about thirty to forty percent from what I observed a few years back and improving SLA-related compliance."

"There are many features that are valuable including Whatsapp messages, OCR, and image recognization, but I have not tried all of them."

"When considering all the facts, this is one of the most user-friendly RPA tools that I have worked with."

"We have had a massive return on full-time employee resources that we have saved by just using Automation Anywhere."

"We are trying to do about 100 automated processes this year, and I have confidence that the solution is able to cater our needs."

More Automation Anywhere pros

"The spend module is really amazing and lightning-fast. It can give even the most novice of analysts access to the information needed and the ability to tweak it the way they want to see it. It has a lot of flexibility."

"The most valuable features are the sourcing and tendering processes."

"One of the most valuable features is the opportunity-identification through the spend analytics. Another is around the RFX options to benchmark various pre-qualified vendors that are invited to participate."

"SMART has been helpful for sourcing and public bids. For regulatory purposes, our university posts bids, depending on the scope of the bid. We get a lot of value out of SMART's ability to post to a public site and have suppliers see that information, register in the tool, and participate."

"SMART's source-to-pay feature has helped us undergo a digital transformation."

"The biggest selling point for us was having the contracts repository centralized for both systems. People are able to search for a contract. Typically, before they go out to bid or engage with a supplier, procurement folks come into GEP SMART and they search for a contract and check to see if there is an existing contract in place."

"I have seen that the sourcing process in GEP SMART is easier than in Oracle, SAP, etc."

"The source-to-pay functionality has contributed to the digital transformation of our company."

More GEP SMART pros

"Ariba allows us to manage our suppliers seamlessly."

"Salesforce.com stands out as the leading ERP solution in the industry."

"SAP Ariba's Sourcing cloud based solution has the greatest quantifiable ROI of its solutions, which typically occurs within the first six months after acquisition for most companies."

"The best thing about SAP Ariba Procurement, in comparison to a lot of its competitors, is that if the company has someone who knows how to configure it, they can do a lot of the process building themselves."

"SAP Ariba Procurement is worth the money as a tool because it connects all departments in one."

"It is a stable solution."

"The PunchOut functionality is fantastic as it makes shopping very easy."

"SAP Ariba Procurement has impacted my organization in many important ways that have been prolonged benefits."

More SAP Ariba Procurement pros

Cons

"In a cost-sensitive industry like banking, where automation needs to prove clear ROI, a more flexible pricing structure would assist organizations in expanding automation more aggressively without feeling constrained by budget considerations."

"Getting the bot design into the developer's hands is taking longer than we initially anticipated."

"It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability."

"The human training area is still something that needs to be improved. It's not so much the actual technology learning, but rather how you bring this to life with all the peripheral competencies that are needed for it."

"Excel functionalities, the macro interface can be improved in the next release of RPA platform Automation Anywhere. Functionalities such as maneuvering on the excel worksheets, increased capability to manipulate formulae, and other Excel functionalities will give Automation Anywhere and edge in the RPA platform category since most financial applications use a lot of Excel and macro sheets for their calculations and postings."

"We are having trouble creating a reliable and stable situation in our environment."

"Automation Anywhere should improve its OCR command, as it's my observation that I have faced data loss or improper data being extracted."

"One area where I think there's an opportunity to do things a lot better is in the analytics function. They do have a concept or product called Bot Insights. It hasn't worked for us. It isn't as plug and play as we were led to believe, which is unfortunate. I can absolutely understand the value, and the demonstrations that I've seen of Bot Insights are sensational. But, we just haven't been able to make it work. We've invested a lot of time and effort trying to make it work to no avail."

More Automation Anywhere cons

"Tech support could use a little bit more work."

"Very recently, they implemented a customer success team to manage our expectations and communicate them to their technical team. That function is relatively new and some work needs to be done to build that connection so that it's a little more seamless."

"For sourcing, we do see bugs from time to time."

"We had a lot of challenges and disagreements with SMART. It's been a long road, for sure, on the contract side."

"We had a lot of challenges and disagreements with SMART. It's been a long road, for sure, on the contract side. There is a little bit of pushback on their part when we need stuff done. Things aren't done very efficiently. I'm still waiting on some changes that were requested well over a year-and-a-half ago."

"The loading of the contracts could be a little bit easier. I'd like to see a little bit more of AI brought in, to the point that it's actually reading the contract and automating some things, like expiration dates and renewal terms. That is an area for improvement."

"There are certain things within the contracts module — how to upload the line items, for example — that could be done to make that utility a little more user-friendly, a little more like the sourcing module."

"We didn't like their dashboard initially, but they responded to that very well."

More GEP SMART cons

"The initial setup of SAP Ariba Procurement is not straightforward. We have been trying to set it up for two and a half years for the council I work with."

"I would like to see more reports coming out of Ariba and more insights because it has to work in connection with SAP. So unless I run SAP and Ariba, I have to run. I am not able to see the utility of Ariba."

"On the sourcing, it could be easier to import the documents you want, so if you want items to be bid on, it could be a bit easier to import that from a spreadsheet."

"Salesforce is expensive, with a subscription-based model."

"During the initial setup process of SAP Ariba Procurement, there were a couple of challenges integrating the same system on our SAP platform."

"I would like the solution to be more automatic."

"Ariba Procurement tends to integrate best with other SAP products and is harder to work with if you have non-SAP products in your architecture."

"The SAP portion of the procurement is not always obvious or user friendly."

More SAP Ariba Procurement cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price is where I'm least satisfied. Other vendors are more willing to offer discounts."

"In the Indian market, I feel that for mid-size companies, such as ourselves, that having multiple bots costs a lot. If Automation Anywhere wants to expand in the Indian market, they will need to look at their pricing."

"The pricing of AA is similar to UiPath."

"The cost is at the highest end of the spectrum."

"The price is very reasonable."

"The pricing that we received from Automation Anywhere in the beginning was very economical for us. We've seen a lot of benefit from what we spent to what we're receiving. From the beginning, it's been a very low-cost implementation for us."

"Based on what I've heard, it's costly, but I don't know much about its pricing."

"The pricing is reasonable and one can achieve ROI faster when compared to other tools."

More Automation Anywhere pricing and cost advice

"If our organization could use it as a full-fledged solution, then it would be valuable and give a return on investment. However, since we are not currently using it as a full-fledged solution, even facing some bugs and problems with the synchronization with some of the internal software, we are not able to use it in a full-fledged manner."

"My advice is to think wisely when it comes to estimating the number of licenses that you will require. If you settle on a number too early and you need additional ones, then the extra licenses might be quite expensive."

"The license is expensive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The licensing cost depends on the customer."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

University

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	162
Midsize Enterprise	86
Large Enterprise	565

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...

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How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?

It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.

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What needs improvement with SAP Ariba Procurement?

At the moment, I don't have any specific reasons for improvement areas in SAP Ariba Procurement. The main improvement...

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What is your primary use case for SAP Ariba Procurement?

I am a customer of this tool, and I use SAP Ariba Procurement for my regular procurement roles. This software is used...

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What advice do you have for others considering SAP Ariba Procurement?

In managing supplier relationships and mitigating risks, SAP Ariba Procurement has a very strong role to play. It giv...

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Comparisons

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Appian vs Automation Anywhere

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Zycus Source to Pay Suite vs GEP SMART

Compared 6% of the time

Zycus iSource vs GEP SMART

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

PeopleSoft eProcurement vs SAP Ariba Procurement

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle E-Business Suite iProcurement vs SAP Ariba Procurement

Compared 6% of the time

Procurify vs SAP Ariba Procurement

Compared 5% of the time

ePlus Procure+ vs SAP Ariba Procurement

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Automation Anywhere

October 2026

Download Automation Anywhere product report

Buyer's Guide

GEP SMART

October 2026

Download GEP SMART product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Ariba Procurement

October 2026

Download SAP Ariba Procurement product report

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

SMART by GEP

Ariba Procurement

Interactive Demo

Automation Anywhere

Demo not available

GEP Worldwide

Demo not available

SAP

Overview

Automation Anywhere offers ease of use, robust system connectivity, and GenAI-driven document automation through a cloud-native platform, significantly enhancing productivity across multiple industries with advanced AI features.

Delivering a comprehensive suite of tools designed for easy integration and rapid deployment, Automation Anywhere drives efficiency by reducing costs and automating repetitive tasks. Its cloud-native platform supports broad industry adoption, including advanced AI features like process automation and Co-Pilot, streamlining complex workflows with minimal technical skills required. Users benefit from robust integration capabilities, which facilitate seamless interaction with multiple systems. However, there is room for improvement in areas such as user-friendliness for beginners, stability, flexible licensing, and enhanced OCR functionality. Organizations in sectors such as banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare gain from the improved operational efficiency and ROI Automation Anywhere offers.

What are the important features of Automation Anywhere?

Ease of Use: Simplifies automation tasks with a user-centric interface.
Robust Connectivity: Provides seamless integration with multiple systems.
GenAI-Driven Document Automation: Leverages AI to automate document management.
Process Automation & Co-Pilot: Enhances workflow automation with advanced AI.
Cloud-Native Platform: Enables rapid deployment and integration.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Time Savings: Automation drastically reduces manual processing time.
Cost Efficiency: Decreases overall operational costs by automating tasks.
Productivity Enhancement: Streamlines workflows with AI-driven tools.
Improved Integration: Enhances ability to work with multiple systems.
Scalability: Supports growth with a flexible cloud-native architecture.

In the insurance industry, Automation Anywhere is utilized for automating processes such as enrollment management and compliance checks. Its applications extend to supply chain management, financial transactions, and business performance monitoring across sectors like banking, finance, manufacturing, and healthcare, helping organizations to automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Automation Anywhere

GEP SMART is a comprehensive procurement platform offering a centralized contract repository, intuitive spend analytics, and AI-driven opportunity identification.

GEP SMART provides a user-friendly interface that enhances procurement transparency and efficiency. It accommodates electronic signatures, supports streamlined project management, and enables effective regulatory compliance. Its flexibility and consistent advancements improve user experience, accessible to those without extensive IT expertise. While challenges exist in supplier management scope and search functions, improvements are needed in contract handling and data integrity.

What are GEP SMART's key features?

Centralized Contract Repository: Easy access and management of contracts.
Intuitive Spend Analytics: In-depth analysis for better decision-making.
User-friendly Interface: Simplified navigation with efficient reporting.
Electronic Signatures: Streamlined procurement processes with digital verification.
AI Tools: Assists in opportunity identification and data consolidation.

What benefits do users gain from GEP SMART?

Enhanced Transparency: Improved visibility across procurement activities.
Streamlined Procurement: Efficient handling of RFQs, RFPs, and RFIs.
Improved Compliance: Supports adherence to regulatory requirements.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary data entry and streamlines system configurations.
Flexibility: Consistent updates and enhancements improve the overall experience.

Organizations across industries implement GEP SMART for procurement activities such as sourcing, contract management, and spend analysis. They utilize its SaaS capabilities to facilitate sourcing events and manage contract lifecycles without needing full P2P integration. The platform is used to report on spend, diversity, and savings, ensuring efficient procurement processes.

GEP Worldwide

SAP Ariba Procurement streamlines procurement by integrating supplier management and contracts into a unified platform, enhancing productivity while allowing for seamless configuration and spend analysis.

SAP Ariba Procurement centralizes procurement activities, providing dynamic pricing tools such as reverse auctions and PunchOut functionality for simplified shopping. Its spend analytics improve decision-making and supplier visibility. The platform is configurable without third-party reliance, ensuring cost-effectiveness and quick ROI through online auctions and RFPs. Workflow management offers insights into approval processes, with guided buying and data analytics improving cost-saving and supplier performance. However, integration with non-SAP systems and user-friendliness can be improved, with additional focus needed on setup complexity and enhanced vendor management capabilities.

What are the most important features?

Supplier Management: Seamless integration and control over supplier interactions.
Contract Integration: Centralized management of contractual information.
Dynamic Pricing Tools: Includes reverse auctions for cost efficiency.
PunchOut Functionality: Simplifies the purchasing process.
Spend Analytics: Enhances decision-making and supplier transparency.

What benefits should users look for?

Cost Savings: Achieved through competitive bidding and auctions.
Quick ROI: Faster returns with streamlined procurement processes.
Improved Supplier Performance: Guided buying enhances supplier assessments.
Configuration Ease: No reliance on third-party solutions simplifies adoption.

Industries such as digital strategy and financial services implement SAP Ariba Procurement for sourcing, contracting, and vendor management. Its deployment in SAP Cloud supports the RFx process from analysis to supplier evaluation, facilitating contractual data management and indirect procurement tasks.

SAP

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics

Exxon Chevron Macys

Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT)

Buyer's Guide

GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement

September 2026

Free Report: GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement

Find out what your peers are saying about GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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